Nonconformity had appealed to Raiden since childhood. From the ages of seven to seventeen, he spent summer vacations on his father’s farm in New Bern, North Carolina. His father was a born-and-raised American—a self-made millionaire who never married. He claimed that Raiden, the product of a one-night stand during a business trip to Nagoya, was his only son.
Raiden’s mother refused to make any further comment regarding the extent of her relationship with his father. Every time Raiden pressed her for more details, she either deflected his questions and changed the subject or regarded him in cool quietude. Silence was his mother’s modus operandi. Often, days would pass without any conversation between the two of them. Raiden had never sensed any love from her. At an early age, he became accustomed to the loneliness he felt from her complete lack of interest in him. He consoled himself with the fact that he could escape his mother’s dreary company for an entire season when it came time to visit his father’s paradisal property.
Every summer, he tasted freedom. The more he acquired, the more he wanted. The hijinks-filled month spent in New Bern after Raiden’s senior year of high school left him unprepared to return to Japan—especially to the austere setting of Nagoya University. Raiden felt off-kilter and out of place in such an intimidating environment. He pined for the boozy summer spent in New Bern with his American garage band and their eager groupies.
Fortuitously, he found a kindred spirit in his dorm mate, Taro. Their well-intentioned studying sessions turned into hours of jamming and songwriting. The feeling of collaborative creation was addictive. Raiden sang, played guitar, and wrote most of the songs. Taro played bass, sang backup vocals, and pretty much called the shots. Though the two of them did well scoring gigs at a few local bars, they quickly realized that their band needed more dimension to bring down the house at the most popular venues. Taro (self-dubbed “the gray matter” of their duo) suggested that adding a lead guitarist and a drummer to their lineup would bring harmony and balance to Scent’s sound. Raiden (proclaimed “the panty-dropper” by his blunt best friend) was more than willing to put Taro’s vision to the test—especially since his dedication to scholarly pursuits had plummeted during the first semester of college.
Soon after he and Taro joined creative forces, Raiden stopped caring about school. His major, preordained by his mother, was Medical Science, though he had never displayed a proclivity for it. By mid-term, his grades slipped dangerously low. As a result, he endured several scared-straight lectures from his professors. Still, none of their threats motivated him to improve his academic performance. Before the second semester began, he dropped out of the university.
Raiden was unsurprised to find that he did not care about this failure. He wanted to experience life on a looser tether and feel free to make his own choices. The thought of rebelling against the philosophy of perfection drilled into him by his strict Japanese mother thrilled him. A smug satisfaction overtook him when he thought of the proverb, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” He was a rogue nail: one that somehow managed to escape the hammer’s blow and stick out even further.
Released from the confines of dorm life, Taro and Raiden found a tiny studio apartment. It afforded no privacy but met their budget. They searched for additional musicians to add weight to their sound. After days of suffering through mostly unimpressive auditions, they managed to snag two true talents. Yoshi was a quiet, brilliant drummer who hid behind a mane of scraggly black hair and barely spoke; Kai was a technically sound lead guitarist with a knack for abusing obscenities and smoking two packs a day. When the four of them played together, it was instantaneous magic. Raiden could have sworn he heard the ka-ching of cash registers in the not-too-distant future.
His intuition about the band’s high level of success proved correct after they hit it big a mere two years later. At the age of twenty-one, Raiden became an overnight rock star. Fame was a jolting transition from the anonymous life he was used to leading. Under the smothering paternal thumb of their label, Raiden and his bandmates were constantly told what to do and when and how to do it. If he complained about the overwhelming pressures of stardom, Taro would remind him that Scent had a specific image to maintain. As the band’s primary vocalist, Raiden bore the brunt of responsibility for its durability. (“Suck it up,” Taro often advised.)
During performances, Raiden and his bandmates wore the elaborate costumes and makeup popular in the visual kei music scene. He engaged in playful fanservice with Taro and Kai to appease the erotic appetites of their audience. So long as he continued to flirt with his bandmates and wear too much eyeliner, his cash flow never ran low. In the public eye, he plastered his band’s brand all over anything and everything marketable to keep turning a profit. Teen fans (especially girls) spent fortunes on Scent’s merchandise. Raiden did not have much choice in selling out, but he came to terms with it. What really mattered: his love for music endured, despite the theatrics and politics to which he had to acclimate himself.
Nowadays, the members of Scent were celebrities in Japan, and the band’s popularity had recently spread overseas. After years of attempting to build a solid international fan base, Scent had finally become a buzz-worthy act in the highly competitive American indie rock scene with the release of their latest single. “Surprised” was a Raiden-penned ditty about discovering a cheating lover in flagrante delicto. Though it was standard pop-rock fare, “Surprised” had a catchy hook, and the lyrics were almost entirely in English. Raiden’s flawless diction, coupled with the impressive soundtrack his bandmates provided, added to the song’s trendiness. What ushered in the single’s breakout international success, however, was its music video. Two weeks after it debuted online, the MV went viral. Featuring a pensive Raiden strolling through an abandoned amusement park in full-throttle, androgynous rock star mode—surrounded by his dress-clad, instrument-shredding band members—the video provided a memorable viewing experience. Teen girls and guys alike swooned over Raiden’s exotic beauty and mysterious persona. Not to mention, it was evident that Taro, Kai, and Yoshi could play the hell out of their instruments.
Novelty-greedy young Americans loved Scent’s visual kei gimmick: they devoured it like junk food. Six months after “Surprised” debuted on the charts, Scent had gained enough popularity in the US to secure a spot as the opening act for Prodigal Son, a fairly successful alternative rock group planning a summer tour titled Feeling the Way. It would begin on June 15 in Detroit, and end on August 28 in Los Angeles.
To bulk up their flabby Midwestern fan base, Taro had convinced the other bandmates to arrive in Michigan a few weeks before the first show and conduct an aggressive PR campaign. While promoting the tour, Taro, Raiden, Yoshi, Kai, and a few essential members of their staff took up temporary residence in Novi, Michigan. Novi was not only the mecca of Japanese culture in Metro Detroit, but also possessed the added advantage of a prime location. The moderately affluent suburb was distant enough to avoid Detroit’s abject poverty and rampant crime, and near enough to efficiently commute to the city whenever necessary.
The tour’s opening night was less than three weeks away, and Raiden was already sick of promotional duties. Since the beginning of Scent’s rapid ascent to fame, Taro had stressed to each member the importance of personally publicizing the band whenever possible. Raiden knew, however, that his best friend counted on him more than any of the others to fulfill these obligations—especially now that Scent was on American pop culture’s radar.
Taro, Kai, and Yoshi unanimously agreed that Raiden was the obvious choice to serve as Scent’s “face” in the States. His striking, marketable good looks, fluency in English, and inherent prestige as the band’s lead singer set him a cut above the rest. Try as he might, Raiden failed to convince Matsuda, the band’s manager, that his antisocial personality was not conducive to the politics of PR.
Currently, Raiden’s ambassadorial duties included: smiling brightly in the blinding lights of the flashbulbs for staged Kodak moments, fawning over wealthy socialites and pretending not to notice when they groped him, and abstaining from homicide when the stray visual-kei-devoted, overweight fangirl squealed directly into his ear. Most unfortunately, Raiden had to remain amenable to the wining and dining of “influential” folks he did not care to know. Metro Detroit was chock-full of scumbags: some local, a few transplants, others transient. Probably there were good eggs mixed in with the rotten ones, but Raiden had yet to meet one. Unsurprisingly, the blue bloods were no better than the peons.
Go ahead and put lipstick on a pig, but you’re still looking at one ugly fucking swine.
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